Welcome to this short blog post. It is short because the list of what you need to do to prepare for an online tutoring session is also short!
Send Materials in Advance
If you have specific material you’d like to discuss, or anything you think you’ll need to send me during the session, you are encouraged to send them before the session. This way we don’t lose our tutoring minutes trying to pass each other documents and use every second for learning.
To send me materials, you can email them to me using my address tutorahmet@gmail.com. Sending materials through text or WhatsApp is also OK, but email works best.
Have a Pencil and Paper Ready
We will need a medium for you to do handwriting (neither calculus nor physics are observer sports.) Ideally, a student would have:
- A tutoring notebook to take notes.
- A scratch paper to work on the questions.
Needless to say, digital substitutes for these (like smart tablets) also work.
Do the Assignments
This last one is pretty obvious, but let me explain the reason for it from a different angle. Tutoring is your unique chance to prioritize the specific gaps in your knowledge and focus on learning precisely what you need to learn. All other stages of teaching necessarily evaluate you as a part of a group: Your teacher at school is supposed to teach the whole class, and thus cannot focus on your difficulties. Textbook authors cannot customize the books specifically for your needs, etc. The unique advantage of tutoring is, you can turn it into a personal learning experience where your specific learning needs are met.
One way to ensure that you make the most out of this opportunity is, to do your best to diagnose the specific gaps in your knowledge before the sessions. And a great way to do this is to do the assignments. By looking at your performance on them, we will decide on what topics we need to prioritize and personalize your sessions accordingly. This kind of personalized learning is possible only in tutoring, so why not do the assignments and make the most of it?